Friday, August 30, 2013

EPIC Distractions!

I’ve been a little distracted lately by the 40K universe… I have been reading Hammer
of the Emperor and the epic battles on Golgotha got me excited about
all the “Epic scale” 40K stuff I've had ferreted away in the Hobby Dungeon…. Some
I’ve had for ages, other stuff my friend John picked up of Kijiji a year ago – because it
was too good of a deal to pass up – but not being a miniature painter he
dropped it off with me and I’m to paint the Man o’ War minis that he got in the box for him
at some point to use with Dread Fleet….

Most of the Space Marine and
Imperial stuff I’ve had for years… the Ork stuff (and Squat and Chaos stuff
that I haven’t even had a look at yet…) is all from John… I also have a pile of
Eldar stuff which is an even mix of stuff I’ve had and stuff from John.

I was planning on using Future War Commander
to play out Epic battles with these legions… I like the idea of using stands as
“platoons”. But I don’t think the Space Marines in the 40K universe are
organized in “platoons” per se. It seems from the fluff I can find that they
are organized in companies of ten squads. So I guess these stands will
represent to or three of those squads (and two or three APCs) and I’ll have
about 4 of each per company.

This is how I kind of imagined a company looking in my force.
Though I seem to recall that you could only have 3 HQs per full 1000 points of
army… Not that I ever cared that much for points… but ideally I’d like to keep
the ratio of command to troop elements… I seem to think this is were the system
kind of broke down for me. It’s been a few years since I’ve played but I seem
to recall if you had a force of high point cost items You would end up having a
higher ratio of command to troop elements. (M1 tanks, for example, in Cold
War Commander were a few hundred points each and if you were fielding
a unit armed with them you could feasibly have a HQ element of every two or
three tank elements, whereas a force of mostly infantry would have an HQ element
of every dozen troop elements… if you were “playing by the rules” for force
building and using points and the force limits and stuff…)

Space Marine Terminators and a
Land Raiders from the First Company (which is where you apparently find veterans
and Terminators and Land Raiders). I need to finish up a few more Land Raiders for this company.

Space Marine Vindicator.

I’ve done the Space marines in
orange for a number of reasons. The very first Space Marines I ever painted I
did in orange – these were those very first multi-part pose-able plastic Space
Marines that were like $20 for a box of thirty…? Anyone remember those? Anyway,
I think I called them the Emperor’s Jesters and even had a chapter badge that
looked like a jesters head… I have no desire to call these Emperor’s Jesters…
but I still like orange.

I also like the idea of a bright
visible colour to kind of say; “We know you know where we are and we want you
to know that we know that you know and that we don’t care… because we’re that
bad ass and will mess you up anyway….”

I’m also a little confused about Marine armoured support –
like tanks (Predators) and assault guns (Vindicators) and self-propelled
missile carriers (Whirlwinds)– where do they fit into the organizations?! Most
of the organization charts I’ve been able to track down on the interwebs show
the chapter as being 10 mechanized companies with organic transport; armoured
(Rhinos, Land Raiders) or otherwise (Bikes, Land Speeders). But there doesn’t
seem to be any spot in the organization charts for armour? Perhaps I’ll have to
track down on of the 40K codexes to figure it out…

Orcs – I did one stand to see
what they’d look like. I’ve done them on bigger bases with more guys… to make
them look more like the massive horde that they are. I have enough Orcs to make
60+ such elements…

Imperial Guard Ragnarok tanks

Of the Guard stuff I had, most
of it is “support” – I had a few Basilisk self-propelled artillery, a couple
Gorgon assault troop carriers, two Sentinels reconnaissance walkers, and these
Ragnarok tanks pictured above. In the stuff I got from John there were a few
Bombard self-propelled siege guns, a Death Strike Self-propelled missile
launcher and a Capitol Imperialis moblie fortress, and a Leviathan Armoured
Imperial Command Centre. Not much of a force… No “sharp end” units (infantry or
tanks – or at least not enough tanks for a regiment…).

So I’ve been looking for some
more Imperial forces on ebay… I did manage to pick up two Leman Russ Battle
companies (22 tanks – at three per company that would make SEVEN companies –
the Ragnarok tanks an eighth! Huzzah!), but I have yet to pick up any Guard
inafantry. I’m pretty much about to give up – the few lots I’ve seen went for
absurd amounts of money. I’ll probably end up getting some sort of stand in
from Dark Realm
Miniatures or Ground
Zero Games. (The Dark Realm Pax
Arcadian Infantry look promising).

Here’s the first few of the
newly acquired tanks…

Imperial Guard Leman Russ tanks

When will I actually have enough
of these to play a game…? Who know!?If I keep reading that Black Library fluff it may end up being sooner
rather than later!

The TO&E has gone right out the window of late. Far too many new units "were there all along" being churned out to sell toy soldiers at GW HQ these days. The old TO&E of a "Codex" chapter had 10 companies, 1st was Veterans as above, 2nd through 5th were "battle" companies of 6 Tactical squads, 2 Assault and 2 Devestator, 6th through 7th were homogenous "reserve" companies with two Tactical, one Assault and one Devestator company, and 10th was the Scout company rounding it out. All but the scouts had Rhinos and Dreadnoughts listed on the support elements, with Land Speeders and Bikes being available in weird organisations (6th and 7th have one each respectively, but are Tactical companies where the usual organisation would have Assault squads manning fast vehicles....) 10th company gets no support.

The way to ignore this all is to say "non-Codex chapter" and just do whatever seems fun.

Yeah, unsurprisingly Granny W has never been too clear on how the SMs actually use armour, mostly because it doesn't fit with the infantry-centric image of battle that GW relies on, Titans notwithstanding. I think I remember something about that sort of extra non-APC stuff being brigaded under the Chapter Master normally, and doled out as the situation required.

I'd guess it'd be chucked under the new "Master of the Armoury" character and attached ad-hoc, or stuff like Assault Squads with jump packs, on bikes or manning Land Speeders would have their attached Rhino converted into a Predator or whatever. TBH I don't think they ever really thought it through properly. Apocalypse formations might be a source of information about larger scale units, although there are pictures of the entire Ultramarines Chapter around like the one in, IIRC, 3rd ed Codex Space Marines that theorethically have "everything" in it.